Nels Coxman's quiet life as a snowplow driver comes crashing down when his beloved son dies under mysterious circumstances. His search for the truth soon becomes a quest for revenge against a psychotic drug lord named Viking and his sleazy henchmen. Transformed from upstanding citizen to coldblooded vigilante, Coxman unwittingly sets off a chain of events that includes a kidnapping, a series of deadly misunderstandings and a turf war between Viking and a rival boss.
Liam Neeson is infamous for these types of films, violent chases fueled by vengeance and Cold Pursuit is exactly the same. However, where this film differs is in the characters and that's what makes this film unique. The film seems to bounce around a lot, but the main story-line behind all of this is that Nels son is killed by a group of gangsters, and Nels goes after that in sought of revenge. I do like how the advertising for this film really seemed to grip audiences though, and really got me hyped up for the film, so much that I watched the second viewing at my cinema! Is this film a blazing success or will it be left out in the cold? Here are my thoughts.
The beginning of any film is always key to introducing us to the characters, scenery and most importantly, the plot. I really liked how the film, right from the very beginning, put us in the characters shoes, by showing them in both personal and public environments we were able to quickly and efficiently gather a good enough idea of who the various character types were, as well as the various relationships that they shared with each other. The film then made these really engaging by constantly updating how the characters were and their relationships during certain events (such as the death of his son) and these types of scenes really helped to change and evolve the current set of character relationships tin the film. Seeing why the characters had various emotions ensured that the way in which the film engaged with us was positive and engaging, because we always understood why characters had certain feelings or emotions and these types of effects helped to create really engaging and exciting characters. I feel that the character set in this film was really interesting, sure it was fairly typical of a Neeson film but that didn't distract from the variety of excitement and action packed scenes in this film. From gunfights to various ways in which Neeson dealt with his enemies, there were plenty of interesting scenes which helped to keep this film alive and breathing, they were also fairly typical and standard but I liked how a twist was put into them by using either the scenery or comedy to help engage with the audience. Speaking of these scenes, I really feel that they were important and beneficial to the overall structure and presentation of the plot in this film. The plot was very simple which hugely benefited the film, not only did it make the film easy to understand but it also ensured that we could follow the film and enjoy it too without any issues or distractions, the plot did slowly unravel but it helped to get the audience involved by getting us to think ahead and to figure out the puzzles.
These fights and hunting scenes really gave the film some life, because they gave us a different perspective of the character and really added in a sense of passion from the characters as we could see how distracted the character was in order to gain vengeance on his son. This film was not what I was expecting but once I understood and came to grips with the fact it was a dark comedy, in a Fargo-esque sort of way, and a parody of revenge killing films, rather than meant to be taken seriously other than for its beautiful absurdity, I started to enjoy it. The whole movie was fun escapism with gratuitous violence, and hyper-exaggerated cliché portrayals of Native Americans, crime bosses and average men being local heroes, etc. Not to mention an exponentially growing kill tally. The film also adds in a nice sense of humour too which is quite strange considering someone dies every few minutes! On the whole, this is a good mix of comedy and action, I found all the actors in this did a great job. The whole cast brought this flick together, led of course by the man of action Neeson. I also really liked how the characters were perceived which kept the film interesting for us, by portraying Viking and his gang as violent thugs with a mysterious twist, this created a type of ecosystem that surrounded each of the gangs in the film which was really effective in the overall manner in which the film portrayed itself to us. I liked these tense scenes though and I felt that they were powerful and as the film moved along, the plot sped up which helped to keep further parts of the film interesting and exciting, the addition of plot twists also helped to keep audiences on our toes and to mix things up a little to prevent the film being boring. This film definitely didn't suffer from a lack of action that's for sure!
This film was far from perfect though, the main issue that I had was that the way in which the film was put together seemed very poor and confusing for me. The film seemed to jump around quite a lot by switching scenes and characters without giving us an explanation which yes it helps to enforce the mystery element to the film but it made some parts of the film confusing. Albeit these confusions were cleared up later, but at the time they were very confusing. The film seemed like it had lots of very good scenes but randomly put together, there weren't many good links between these which would have kept the film fluid and well put together, this element of the film was definitely the biggest let down for me. Whereas Nels and his wife split up early in the film, there was no solid explanation for this , there was no explanation of who the people that were being killed at the time during the film was and there just didn't seem to be much supporting information that would help us to really immerse ourselves in the films plot. The acting was great but the plot was shallow and just didn't go anywhere and that's what I think let the film down for the most part. There didn't seem to be any ambition of risk taken whilst creating this film (although it is basically an English version of the film 'in order of disappearance') which feels like a let down.
The additions of side stories didn't seem to be much help either, unfortunately, it just doesn't work here since these scenes don't feel parallel to the main story or interesting. For example, a female cop, portrayed as eager and hard-nosed, is constantly discovering bits of info related Neeson's son death, even confronting him out of the blue about it, appearing suspicious of him for some reason, but nothing ever happens after that. What was the point? This film is full of short ends like this that builds us up and then lets us down.
Overall, I would give this film a 7. I think that the characters were really good, the acting was really good and so was the story behind the plot. But for me, what lets this film down is the execution, it didn't feel fluid and smooth and many of the parts of the film felt quite confusing and questionable because they weren't properly explained and integrated into the main story-line for this film. It was exciting though and if you enjoy Neeson films then you probably won't feel let down with this one as it follows suite in a long line of violent vengeance films with him in. I would recommend this film though, as it certainly entertains and there are a few scenes in here which truly feel exciting and engaging, but the way in which the film flows just isn't solidly enough to make it anything special.
Thank you for reading my review, I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing this. Have a lovely day. :)
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